Thursday, May 31, 2012

A Chinese businesswoman is at the centre of a mystery over why Fr Seed gave her £34,000 from his order’s charity bank account.

Xuelin Black, 47, has lived in London since the late Nineties ‘developing business and political interests’.

In the run-up to last year’s Election she donated £50,000 to the Tories and was later invited to their summer ball. She now advises Mr Cameron’s Big Society ‘Tsar’ Lord Wei.

Last night the Franciscan order was investigating why Fr Seed gave her the £34,000 cheque drawn from its charity account. She held on to it for two months before paying it into Fr Seed’s personal account.

Fr Seed described it as a ‘loan’ when questioned by The Mail on Sunday but declined to elaborate.

Miss Black, who runs an import business was made a papal dame by Pope Benedict XVI. She insisted yesterday that Fr Seed had inherited money following an elderly relative’s death.

‘He didn’t have a bank account so I held on to it for a couple of months while he opened one,’ she said. She added that she was introduced to Archbishop Eugenio Sbarbaro by Fr Seed at a party ‘years ago’.

She said: ‘He [the Archbishop] told me about his good work and asked if I could help. I made a donation a few years later. I didn’t expect to be made a papal dame.

I do loads of work for charity.’ She said the Archbishop flew to London to present her with the honour at the Ritz hotel. Fr Seed was also there.

Rupert Murdoch is a bad man. His son James is also bad. Rebekah Brooks is allegedly bad. The News of the World was very bad; it hacked phones and pilloried people. British prime ministers grovelled before this iniquity. David Cameron even sent text messages to Brooks signed "LoL", and they all had parties in the Cotswolds with Jeremy Clarkson. Nods and winks were duly exchanged on the BSkyB deal.

Shock, horror.

Offering glimpses of the power and petty gangsterism of the British tabloid press, the inquiry conducted by Lord Leveson has, I suspect, shocked few people. As the soap has rolled on, bemusement has given way to boredom; Tony Blair was allowed to whine about the Daily Mail's treatment of his wife until he and the inquiry's amoral smugness protecting him were exposed by a member of the public, David Lawley-Wakelin, who shouted, "Excuse me, this man should be arrested for war crimes." His Lordship duly apologised to the war criminal and the truth-teller was seen off.

Why Murdoch should complain about the British establishment has always mystified me. His interrogation, if that is the word, by Robert Jay QC, was a series of verbal marshmallows that Murdoch promptly spat out. When he described one of his own rambling, self-satisfied questions as "subtle", Jay received this deft dismissal from Murdoch: "I'm afraid I don't have much subtlety in me."

As the theatre critic Michael Billington reminded us recently, it was in the Spectator in 1955 that Henry Fairlie coined the term "the establishment", defining it as "the matrix of official and social relations within which power in Britain is exercised". For most of my career as a journalist, Murdoch has been an influential and admired member of this club: even a mentor to many of those now casting him as a "bad apple". His deeply cynical mantra, "I'm only giving the public what they want", was echoed by journalists and broadcasters as they lined up to dumb down their work and embrace the propaganda of corporatism that followed Murdoch's bloody move to Wapping in 1986.

More than 5,000 men and women were sacked, and countless families destroyed and suicides committed; and Murdoch could not have got away with it had Margaret Thatcher and the Metropolitan Police not given him total, often secret support, and journalists not lain face down on the floors of buses that drove perilously through the picket lines of their former, principled colleagues.

Cheering him on, if discreetly, were those now running what Max Hastings has called the "new establishment": the media's managerial middle class, often liberal to a fault, that was later to fall at the feet of Murdoch's man Blair, the future war criminal, whose election as prime minister was celebrated in the Guardian with: "Few now sang England Arise, but England has risen all the same."

Michael Collins has written a great article today showcasing the enormous lies of Tony Blair and the extent of the Blair-Murdoch connection both getting us into the Iraq War.This lie and connection has cost us dearly in finance but more importantly in human life.Over a million Iraqis were slaughtered by the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation.http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/...

And over 4,000 service men were sacrificed for this invasion and occupation (by official counts)http://icasualties.org/.......read more

Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson has been arrested in connection with allegedly committing perjury.

Coulson, Prime Minister David Cameron’s former media adviser, was arrested by Strathclyde Police officers in London on Wednesday morning.

A police spokeswoman said: “Officers acting for Strathclyde Police Operation Rubicon detained a 44-year-old man in London this morning under Section 14 of the Criminal Procedure Scotland Act on suspicion of committing perjury at the High Court in Glasgow.“It would be inappropriate to comment further in this case.”

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The education secretary has spoken out against regulating the press at the Leveson Inquiry.Michael Gove MP said today free speech means “some people are going to get offended”. He has previously claimed the inquiry is having a chilling effect on the press, since it was announced last summer.

Gove said he believes the law of the land is sufficient to deal with offending behaviour by newspapers.

He said: “I have a prior belief that we should use existing laws of the land and that individuals and institutions should be judged fairly on the basis of the existing laws of the land.”

The minister also said he thought it was a consequence of free speech that some people would sometimes be offended.

He told the inquiry: “I don’t think any of us can accept that behaviour necessarily, but there are a variety of sanctions. There is social ostracism, disapproval. There is the penalty that someone pays who chooses to use a commercial outlet to publish that which is inappropriate or distasteful, but by definition, free speech doesn’t mean anything unless some people are going to be offended some of the time.”

He added: “I’m unashamedly on the side of those who say that we should think very carefully before legislation and regulation because the cry ‘something must be done’ often leads to people doing something which isn’t always wise.”....read more

Metropolitan police said the 42-year-old was arrested yesterday morning after being asked to go to a police station in south west London.

She was arrested as part of "Operation Weeting," the police name for their investigation into phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's News International.

Former News International executive Rebekah Brooks and her husband Charlie were arrested in the same investigation in March.

Britain's scandal began in 2005 with the revelation that tabloid reporters had listened in to voicemail systems of aides to the royal family. It mushroomed last summer when it was revealed that hacking had been widespread at Murdoch's News of the World tabloid, which has since been shut.

A stranger to our shores watching Tony Blair at the Leveson Inquiry yesterday would have got the impression of a reasonable and decent man who had unaccountably been abused and mistreated by a — his word — ‘feral’ Press.

If I had not lived through the Blair years, and seen the way in which newspapers were manipulated and sometimes lied to by his formidable Press machine, I might have been persuaded by this suave and confident performance.

Much as I admire Lord Justice Leveson and the sardonic Robert Jay, QC, who asks most of the questions, I am afraid that either as a result of ignorance or excessive indulgence, their interrogation of the former prime minister was terribly lame. He was not put on the spot over many issues where he certainly has a case to answer.

For example, he was not examined as to why he and his turbulent spin doctor Alastair Campbell — who has inexplicably been treated with the softest of kid gloves by this inquiry — aided and abetted the bid for the Daily Express by the pornographer Richard Desmond in 2000. At that time, the Express was a New Labour-supporting paper, and Mr Blair believed Mr Desmond’s assurances he’d keep it so.

No questions were put about why he had permitted Mr Campbell to oversee the crucial September 2002 dossier about Iraq, which convinced many people that Saddam Hussein constituted a danger to this country.

Equally, he was not required to justify his Press Secretary’s fraudulent second dossier — partly based unattributably on a long-out-of-date university doctoral thesis — published in February 2003.

He was not asked why, in an unprecedented move, he had allowed his spin doctor to give orders to senior civil servants, and was not made to explain why Mr Campbell had connived in the politicisation of the civil service by installing Labour placemen as departmental press officers answerable to him.

His evocation on leaving office of feral newspapers — among which he bizarrely included the distinctly non-feral Independent — was left largely unchallenged.

In fact, for six years, from his election in 1997 until the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mr Blair enjoyed the most favourable Press of any modern British political leader. ...read more

Blair, a Papal Knight of Malta as is Murdoch and father Bush. Their strong belief they are ONLY answerable to the house of paedophlia, fondly known as the VATICAN.

A senior executive with the Libyan Investment Authority, the $70 billion fund used to invest the country's oil money abroad, said Mr Blair was one of three prominent western businessmen who regularly dealt with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the former leader.

Saif al-Islam and his close aides oversaw the activities of the fund, and often directed its officials on where they should make its investments, he said.

The executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said officials were told the "ideas" they were ordered to pursue came from Mr Blair as well as one other British businessman and a former American diplomat.

He said that unlike some other deals - notably some investments run by the US bank Goldman Sachs - JP Morgan's had never turned "bad".

But he added: "Saif and his father played these people like musical chairs. At the end the reputation of the LIA was really damaged because of these interventions."

Documents found by The Sunday Telegraph published this weekend showed Mr Blair had made at least three visits to Tripoli, twice in the lead-up to the release of the alleged Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Megrahi in 2008 and 2009 and once last year. On the first two occasions he was flown to the country on planes arranged by Col Gaddafi.

A senior diplomat told The Daily Telegraph last night that the British embassy in Tripoli had arranged transport for Mr Blair and his entourage in Tripoli and ensured that representatives were there to “greet him and see him off” at the airport.

Mr Blair stayed overnight at the ambassador’s official residence in Tripoli and was accompanied by “several” British police officers for protection.

The documents show that among the people he was due to meet in 2009 was Mohammed Layas, head of the LIA.

A spokesman for Mr Blair said that the visits had largely been to discuss Africa, and categorically denied that he had lobbied Said al-Islam on behalf of JP Morgan.

The spokesman said last night: "As we have made clear many times before, Tony Blair has never had any role, either formal or informal, paid or unpaid, with the Libyan Investment Authority or the Government of Libya and he does not and has never had any commercial relationship with any Libyan company or entity."

Mr Blair began work in January 2008 as a £2million-a-yearn adviser to JP Morgan. Last month, American officials told the New York Post newspaper that the bank managed more than half a billion US dollars on behalf of the LIA.

The executive said that he did not see Mr Blair at the LIA headquarters in the modern Tower of the Revolution overlooking the seafront. He said officials like himself were given their instructions by two senior Saif aides, including Mohammed Ismail, a Libyan with British nationality.

One of the letters arranging the 2008 visit, in which an aide to Mr Blair told the Libyan ambassador to Britain that the former prime minister was "delighted" that "The Leader" was likely to be able to see him, was on notepaper headed "Office of the Quartet Representative", his formal title as Middle East envoy.

The Quartet he represents is made up of the European Union, the United Nations, Russia and the United States. A spokesman for Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, said: "It's up to him to explain why he did this."

The growing closeness of the Blair government to the Gaddafi regime has already come under fire. Abdulhakim Belhadj, former leader the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group and now head of the revolutionary Tripoli Military Council, is demanding an apology after papers showed MI6 arranged for his secret extradition from Malaysia back to Libya in 2004.

Many ordinary Libyans have also expressed surprise at the policy. After the latest revelations, Hoda Abuzeid, a British Libyan whose dissident father was murdered in London in 1995, accused Mr Blair of "selling out".

"People like Blair and those who had their eyes on the business opportunities that Gaddafi could provide sold out people like my family," said Miss Abuzeid, who has returned to the country for the first time since 1980.

"When he had tea in the desert with the 'Brother Leader' did he ever ask him who killed my father?"

Monday, May 28, 2012

*** The former Prime Minister of the UK is earning an estimated �5 million per year from private business ventures connected to his role in the illegal wars in the Middle East -- particularly the invasion and conquest of Iraq and Afghanistan. The huge personal fortune which he now enjoys is his reward for years of service to American's imperial strategy, and to Israel through major progress in advancing the Zionist cause. It's a bounty of corruption, war crimes and murder. ***

Gulf-trotting Tony Blair cashes in on his war contacts

TONY BLAIR has been cashing in on his contacts from the Iraq conflict and his role as Middle East peace envoy for a private business venture expected to earn him more than �5m a year.

The former prime minister has sold his political and economic expertise to two countries, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, via his fledgling private consultancy. He also represents the investment bank JP Morgan in the region. Blair has been working pro bono in the Middle East as a peace envoy while amassing a fortune from the American lecture circuit. By offering himself to the Arab states as a statesman for hire, he could comfortably double his annual earnings.

His consultancy, the London-based Tony Blair Associates (TBA), emulates the New York partnership Kissinger Associates, which was founded by Henry Kissinger, the former national security adviser to President Nixon. One friend of Blair said: �TBA has been set up to make money from foreign governments and major companies. There�s a focus on the Middle East, because that�s where the money is.�

His expanding business interests as he roves across the Middle East means he flips his roles on a daily basis in official meetings: one hour, he is the official peace envoy meeting a Middle East minister or ruler; the next, he is a representative of TBA or JP Morgan. In some meetings with Arab states, where Blair is introduced as the peace envoy, he has been flanked by Jonathan Powell, his former chief of staff, who accepted a job with Morgan Stanley, another US investment bank, after leaving Downing Street. Powell has no role in the peace process, but is a senior adviser to TBA and helps to win business in the Middle East.

Peter Brierley, 59, of Batley, West Yorkshire, whose 28-year-old son Shaun was killed near the Kuwait-Iraq border in 2003 and who refused to shake Blair�s hand at a memorial service this month, said: �This beggars belief. It�s absolutely scandalous that he�s now trying to make money from his contacts in the region. It�s money from the blood and lives of the soldiers who died in Iraq.�

Just hours after he stepped down from No 10 on June 27, 2007, it was announced that Blair was to work as the Middle East envoy, on behalf of the European Union, the United Nations, the United States and Russia. He was given the job on the strength of his involvement in the Middle East during his premiership.

Four months after leaving office, Blair signed a �5m book deal with Random House. He is working on his memoirs, which are pencilled in for publication next autumn, according to sources at the publisher.

His fees for talks, along with contracts with JP Morgan and Zurich Financial Services, are estimated to put his earnings � excluding the book deal � well in excess of �5m a year. He is also involved in philanthropic works, including his faith foundation and a sports foundation.

TBA�s annual earnings in the Middle East alone could be expected easily to double his income, according to business sources in the region. �The ruling families in some of these countries may be fabulously wealthy, but they crave recognition in the western world,� said one source. �Blair offers that and will be in great demand.�

Blair disclosed last December that he had formed TBA, to advise on �political and economic trends and governmental reform�. One of his first recruits was Powell.

On January 17 this year, Blair was in Saudi Arabia in his peace envoy role to hold talks with King Abdullah on the situation in the Gaza strip and the need to end Israeli aggression. Powell was also on the trip.

Two days later Blair and Powell were ushered in to meet the nephew of the king, Prince Alwaleed, the wealthiest businessman in the Middle East.

Alwaleed, who has a fortuneof more than �15 billion, has a 420-room marble palace, a fleet of more than 60 cars and a double-decker jet, the Airbus A380, on order as a private �flying palace�. He has billions of dollars of investments around the world and is chairman of Kingdom Holding Company.

Why would Powell want to meet him? The most likely scenario is that he and Blair were offering TBA�s services or wanted to cultivate Alwaleed as an influential contact. Blair�s spokesman denies TBA business was discussed.

Whether or not they were rebuffed, Blair and Powell packed up their papers to promote TBA�s wares elsewhere. A few days later, on January 26, they popped up in Kuwait. Blair, introduced as the peace envoy, met Sheikh al-Sabah and other senior officials in state rooms. Powell perched discreetly near Blair on a sofa.

This time, they appear to have pulled it off. It emerged a few weeks later that TBA had signed up the country as a client, advising it on �good governance� for what has been reported to be a seven-figure sum. �It�s a big task and he�s working as an adviser on many issues,� a Kuwaiti diplomat said last week.

Blair has enjoyed a longstanding relationship with the Emir of Kuwait. He held talks with Sheikh al-Sabah in May 2003, just weeks after Saddam Hussein was deposed.

Three months after his Kuwait visit this year, on May 24, Blair � in his role as peace envoy � was in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), meeting the education minister.

On the same day, he walked into another meeting with the UAE finance minister, representing JP Morgan, the US investment bank, as an adviser.

The bank refused to comment on the meeting last week. Blair is now a regular visitor to Abu Dhabi, typically staying in a �1,500-a-night double suite at the Emirates Palace. The hotel � the most costly ever built � is decked out with acres of gold leaf and renowned for offering guests the chance to consume real gold flakes; scattered on cappuccinos and cakes it can be ingested harmlessly. Guests are said to consume about 13lb of gold each year.

Blair enjoys cordial relations with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the Crown Prince, who was educated at Sandhurst and who is a Ju- Jitsu expert. He held talks with the Crown Prince on his December 2006 prime ministerial tour of the Middle East.

Blair has praised the UAE for helping the Palestinians with millions of pounds for community projects. The country is also on TBA�s secret client list. Sheikh Mohammed�s state investment fund, Mubadala, is understood to have put TBA on its payroll three months ago.

Mubadala�s interests include oil and gas exploration contracts in Libya, a partnership with EADS, the European defence group and a stake in Ferrari.

John McGaw, a senior adviser at Golden Oryx, a business development company in the UAE, said: �[Blair] has a fantastic network, which is still sort of warm from his former days. He lends global credibility to one of the top sovereign wealth funds.�

One of Mubadala�s subsidiaries is building Masdar City, a zero-carbon development that will be powered by solar energy. Blair supported the successful bid for the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) to be based in the city.

On September 3, Blair was once again in Abu Dhabi, giving a speech before the crown prince and other dignitaries on the opportunities of globalisation. His talk � ranging from the Palestinian issue to the profits from globalisation � illustrates how he deftly blends his unpaid role in the Middle East with opportunities to showcase the political and business talent that is available for hire.

While TBA may guarantee Blair�s financial security, he risks, like Kissinger, ruling himself out of future public service as the client list expands.

Kissinger was appointed in 2002 to chair an inquiry into intelligence failures before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, but came under pressure to reveal the clients of Kissinger Associates. He subsequently stood down, citing a controversy over a conflict of interest.

Blair himself will come under pressure to disclose the client list of TBA if he becomes European Union president, even if he removes himself from the partnership�s day-to-day business.

MPs also believe his work already undermines his role of peace envoy in the Middle East. Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrats� foreign affairs spokesman, said: �The role of peace envoy, the office of which is subsidised by the taxpayer, is not meant to be an opportunity to look for new business opportunities for Tony Blair Associates.�

Blair�s spokesman said it was �absolute nonsense� to suggest that Blair was using contacts from the Iraq conflict or his work as peace envoy for business purposes. He said Blair had known the Emir of Kuwait since 1995.

He said TBA work did not represent a conflict of interest with his peace role. Kingdom Holding Company was not a TBA client and paid consultancy work with Kuwait had been completed, he said. �Tony Blair is in high demand for his advice and analysis in geopolitics,� the spokesman said.

�However, the vast majority of his time is spent on his unpaid activities, principally his role as quartet representative.�

Voters against EU treaty

The Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, has called for a national referendum on the Lisbon treaty as it emerged in a survey that Britain would vote more than two-to-one against.

In a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times, 41% of respondents said they would vote against the treaty in a referendum, with 18% in favour; 41% were undecided.

An equal proportion of the population � 38% � were for and against Tony Blair becoming president of the European Union.

Klaus�s intervention on a referendum came in an open letter addressed to the Czech constitutional court. He has so far refused to sign the treaty, which has been ratified by all other EU members.

The houses that Tony bought

South Pavilion, Buckinghamshire Purchase price: �4m A seven-bedroom mansion bought in 2008. The mansion, once owned by Sir John Gielgud, is a few miles from Chequers, the prime ministerial retreat.

Connaught Square, London Purchase price: �3.65m A five-storey grade II listed Georgian townhouse bought in September 2004. The house is now the Blairs� main London residence.

Archery Close, London Purchase price: �800,000 (estimated) A mews house bought in February 2007. The intention was to improve the security of the Blairs� main London residence.

Myrobella, Co DurhamPurchase price: �30,000 A four-bedroomed home bought in 1983 after Blair was elected as MP for Sedgefield. Now for sale for �300,000.

Townhouse, London.Purchase price: �1.13mMews property bought in September this year with no mortgage.The house � with three bathroooms and a sun terrace � is owned by Cherie Blair and her son Nicky.

The Panoramic, BristolPurchase Price: �525,000Two flats bought for �260,000 and �265,000 in 2002. Peter Foster, a conman, helped with the purchase.

Lord Justice Leveson has ordered an investigation into security procedures at his inquiry into the media after a protester burst into the courtroom to shout at Tony Blair while the former prime minister gave evidence.

The man, wearing a white shirt and chino trousers, entered from behind a curtain almost directly behind Leveson himself, inside court 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Comment: Blair can rest assured there will be those now interested in speaking to Mr.Lawley-Wakelin to see if he can back up his allegations.

The protester, later named as David Lawley-Wakelin, 49, shouted: "Excuse me. This man should be arrested for war crimes. JP Morgan paid him off for the Iraqwar; three months after we invaded Iraq. He held up the Iraq bank for £20m. He was then paid $6m very year, and still is, from JP Morgan, six months after he left office. The man is a war criminal."

Several security guards tackled the man and dragged him away through the same door through which he had entered.

Leveson, appearing shocked, stood up from his seat to watch as the protester was ejected. He asked the court how the man had gained entry. "I'm sorry for that, Mr Blair," Leveson said.

"I'd like to find out how this gentleman managed to access the court through what is supposed to be a secure corridor, and I'll have an investigation undertaken about that immediately." He ended: "I apologise."

Blair, who sat impassively throughout the intrusion, sounded slightly shaken as he answered: "That's fine." He continued: "Can I just say, actually, on the record: what he said about Iraq and JP Morgan is completely and totally untrue. I've never had a discussion with them about that [Iraq]."

Leveson told the former prime minister that he did not need to respond to the intruder's accusations.

Blair replied: "I appreciate that, but part of the difficulty with modern politics – and this is not a criticism of the media – is that my experience of the reporting of these events is that you can have 1,000 people in a room and someone gets up and shouts or throws something, and that's the news.

The other 999 might as well not have bothered turning up."

As the protester was bundled away he told reporters he was a freelance documentary film-maker who has made a 45-minute film entitled The Alternative Iraq Enquiry.

Lawley-Wakelin has been in the spotlight before: on the BBC's Question Time programme he once accused Blair of being a liar prepared to kill for oil.

On Monday he breached a secure area for court staff and jumped into the courtroom. The judge's bench is accessible only to Leveson and his court staff, using a swipe card.

One uniformed police officer, who had accompanied Blair in the witness seating area, bounded past Robert Jay, lead counsel to the inquiry, to bundle Lawley-Wakelin out of the court. Two other plainclothes police officers who were part of Blair's party quickly followed suit.

The court service also had its own two security staff – one stationed inside court 73 and one outside, sitting at the entrance used by the press and public.

The protester was taken by about half a dozen security men to the east block of the high court and held in a secure zone, where he was detained until police arrived and arrested him.

"He has been arrested on suspicion of breach of the peace," said a spokesman for Scotland Yard. "He is currently in custody at a central London police station."

Leveson resumed the inquiry at 2pm, apologising once again to Blair and promising that "efforts will be redoubled" to ensure there would not be a repeat of the morning's drama.

In an opening statement he said: "The inquiry and Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service, which is responsible for security in this building, take the incident this morning extremely seriously. Considerable effort has been put into ensuring all witnesses can give their evidence in a safe and secure environment and I very much regret what has happened and I will be giving consideration to the steps that can be taken and should be taken against this particular intruder.

"Efforts will be redoubled to ensure that incidents of this nature do not recur.

"I repeat my apology to Mr Blair and indeed to everyone else who was involved in or following the inquiry," said Leveson.

The investigation is being led by David Thompson, the director of the Royal Courts of Justice.

Since leaving office in 2007 Blair has been regularly targeted by protesters over his central role in pushing for the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In January last year he was greeted by dozens of activists outside the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in central London as he returned to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the genesis of the conflict.

22nd March 2010. David Cronin attempted a citizens’ arrest of Tony Blair as he was about to enter a hearing on Palestine in the European Parliament. David approached him, put a hand on his arm and said: “Mr Blair, this is a citizens’ arrest.” He was then pushed away by one of Blair’s bodyguards, whereupon he shouted “You are guilty of war crimes”. His attempt was reported in the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Irish Times and other outlets.

The British media has been caught yet again with its pants down in the effort to sell a NATO-led attack on Syria, with the revelation that BBC News used a years-old photo of dead Iraqi children to depict victims of an alleged government assault on the town of Houla.

Click for enlargement.

In a report issued hours after the massacre, the BBC used a photo that was first published over nine years ago and taken in Al Mussayyib, Iraq. The image shows a child skipping over the dead bodies of hundreds of Iraqi children who have been transported from a mass grave to be identified.

The caption used by the BBC to describe the image stated that the picture was provided by an activist and “believed to show the bodies of children in Houla awaiting burial”. After the “mistake” was exposed, the BBC changed their original article but did not issue a retraction....read more

The text messages between Jeremy Hunt and Murdoch’s lobbyist are just plain embarrassing.

FM: great announcement today. Well done

JH: Merci papa [...]

FM: Full of energy and purpose on Andrew Marr! Liked your answer on Rupert and the BBC! Have a great visit to India. Fred

JH: Merci mon ami

In what is perhaps a reference to mutual fatherhood of new babies — their children were born in the same hospital on the same day — the pair resorted to calling each other “daddy”. At times this drifts off into what could be kindly be referred to as flirting.

FM: You were great on the BBC this week-end!

JH: U too daddy [...]

FM: Great speech. Watched it with cycling team. And I can’t believe you managed to do Newsnight as well! You have stamina daddy!

JH: We all find it somewhere!

When Clint Eastwood complained about Hunt abolishingthe UK Film Council:

News Corp’s management and standards committee is carrying out internal investigations relating to Rupert Murdoch’s remaining UK papers -The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times - and is working closely with the detectives investigating alleged phone-hacking and corrupt payments to police and other public officials.A total of 30 people have now been arrested since last July as part of Elveden, which is linked to Scotland Yard’s phone-hacking investigation Operation Weeting.

A police statement said: 'She was arrested shortly after 9am by officers from Operation Elveden, the MPS investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police and public officials.

Probe: Former News International employees arrested under Operation Elveden include (clockwise from top left) ex-Chief Executive Rebekah Brooks, Former News of The World editor Andy Coulson, former NoW Managing Editor Stuart Kuttner and Former Royal Reporter Clive Goodman

'The 37-year-old woman attended Bromley police station by appointment and was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to corrupt under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906, suspicion of conspiracy to cause misconduct in a public office, contrary to common law and suspicion of bribery, contrary to the Bribery Act 2010.'The development marks the first arrest by the force’s phone-hacking squad since Rebekah Brooks and five other suspects were charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice earlier this month.

A 50-year-old employee of HM Revenue and Customs was arrested along with a 43-year-old woman at an address in north-west London by Elveden officers that same day.A spokesman for News International declined to comment but confirmed that a company employee had been arrested.

A former head of fraud at Lloyds Banking Group has herself been charged with a £2.5m fraud, causing blushes at the part-nationalised bank.

Jessica Harper, 50, is accused of submitting false invoices to the tune of £2.46m when working as head of fraud and security for digital banking. It is thought her work involved managing supplies and that the invoices did not relate to personal expenses.

The fraud is alleged to have started in September 2008, shortly before Lloyds had to be bailed out by the taxpayer. The UK government owns 41% of Lloyds after funnelling £20bn of rescue funds into the bank during the financial crisis.

Harper, who lives in Croydon, south London, will appear before Westminster magistrates court next Thursday, charged with one count of fraud by abuse of position.

Andrew Penhale, deputy dead of the CPS central fraud group, said: "The charge relates to an allegation that between 1 September 2008 and 21 December 2011 Jessica Harper dishonestly and with the intention of making a gain for herself abused her position as an employee of Lloyds Banking Group, in which she was expected to safeguard the financial interests of Lloyds Banking Group, by submitting false invoices to claim payments totalling £2,463,750.88, to which she was not entitled."

He said the CPS had decided there was "a realistic prospect of conviction and a prosecution is in the public interest".

Lloyds said: "As the court process is ongoing it would be inappropriate for us to comment."

'If we block it our media sector will suffer for years,' Mr Hunt told him

The document also adds James Murdoch was 'furious' with Vince Cable over his handling of the bid

A source close to Mr Hunt said the memo did not mean he couldn't make an independent decision

Tony Blair is to face the Leveson Inquiry on Monday as investigators probe the Labour Party's ties to Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

The former Prime Minister will take the stand three days before embattled Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is grilled for the first time over his own links to News Corp during its controversial takeover bid of BSkyB last year.

Mr Hunt will also be challenged over whether his public expressions of support for the bid were compatible with the quasi-judicial role he was bestowed by Prime Minister David Cameron.

Close? Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, right, and Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation Chairman and CEO, left, speak during a news conference held in conjunction with the Atlantic Council's 2008 annual awards dinner in Washington

Also giving evidence in one of the most crucial weeks of the inquiry will be Business Secretary Vince Cable, who was stripped of the role of deciding whether the bid could proceed last December after he was secretly recorded saying he had 'declared war' on Mr Murdoch.

After that, Education Secretary Michael Gove and Home Secretary Theresa May will appear on Tuesday and Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke, after Mr Cable, on Wednesday.

The bookings, some of the most high-profile so far, were announced as Jeremy Hunt's former special adviser revealed today that a lobbyist for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation 'bombarded' him with information about the media giant's bid to take over BSkyB.

Adam Smith said the Culture Secretary and his department knew he was in contact with Fred Michel, News Corp's former director of public affairs in Europe.

It emerged yesterday that Jeremy Hunt privately urged David Cameron to back Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB takeover bid just weeks before the Prime Minister put him in charge of ruling on the issue, it emerged last night.

In a bombshell email, the Culture Secretary lavished praise on the £8 billion bid.

Mr Hunt said it would allow Mr Murdoch’s son James to create ‘the world’s first multi-platform media operator’ and insisted that if it was blocked the ‘media sector will suffer for years’.

Controversial: Jeremy Hunt, left, was put in charge of dealing with BSkyB bid by David Cameron, right, after Vince Cable lost the role

The Premier will now face tough questions over why he gave Mr Hunt responsibility for the bid, despite knowing that he had been privately cheerleading for the Murdochs.

Critics will also question the wisdom of Mr Cameron joining Mr Murdoch and News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks for a cosy Christmas lunch just a month later where the bid was discussed.

Admission: Adam Smith admitted his contacts with News Corp were too close

Harriet Harman led the charge against Mr Hunt today telling BBC Breakfast the evidence of his wrongdoing was 'absolutely massive', arguing that instead of judging the Murdochs’ bid, he was backing it.

'There are two bits of evidence, actual straightforward evidence, that Jeremy Hunt was not impartial, he was meddling before he even took over the bid and was on the side of the Murdochs,' she said.

'The first was that he had to be warned off by the civil servants not to have any more meetings with Rupert Murdoch but he kept up the contact through his special adviser, and secondly he wrote a memo to the Prime Minister.'

The Culture Secretary’s message, revealed in evidence to the Leveson inquiry into media standards yesterday, told Mr Cameron it would be ‘totally wrong to cave in’ to critics of the bid, including BBC director-general Mark Thompson, Channel 4 and the Guardian newspaper.

Mr Hunt said James Murdoch was ‘pretty furious’ that Business Secretary Vince Cable had referred the bid to media regulator Ofcom.

He asked for a meeting with Mr Cameron, Mr Cable and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to discuss the handling of the deal.

The disclosure appears directly to contradict Mr Hunt’s insistence to MPs last month that he had made ‘absolutely no interventions seeking to influence a quasi-judicial decision that was at that time the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Business’.

It piles pressure on both Mr Hunt and Mr Cameron in the row over the Government’s handling of the BSkyB bid, which other media organisations argued would hand the Murdoch empire an unassailable dominance in Britain.

Downing Street admitted that the then Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell was not made aware of the private message when he was asked to determine weeks later whether Mr Hunt could act as an impartial judge of the deal, given his previous statements of admiration for Mr Murdoch.

Mr Cameron handed Mr Hunt responsibility for determining the bid after Mr Cable, who had previously been in charge of the issue, was caught on tape boasting that he had ‘declared war’ on News Corporation.

The Culture Secretary’s representations had already been the subject of legal warnings from his own department, according to the counsel to the Leveson inquiry, Robert Jay.

Revelations: Mr Hunt said James Murdoch, left was ‘pretty furious’ that Business Secretary Vince Cable, right, had referred the bid to media regulator Ofcom

He said the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s legal director had advised that although it was not illegal for him to attempt to intervene, to do so would be ‘unwise’.

A picture of the cosy relationship between the Murdoch empire and the department emerged at the inquiry yesterday, with evidence that News Corp’s chief lobbyist Frederic Michel exchanged more than 1,000 phone calls, emails and texts with the Culture Secretary’s team during News Corp’s BSkyB takeover bid.

Most were to and from Mr Hunt’s special adviser Adam Smith, who has already had to quit, admitting his contacts with News Corp went beyond what had been authorised by the Culture Secretary.

Mr Michel and Mr Hunt became close after their wives both gave birth at London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in May 2010.

By October of that year, Mr Michel was emailing Mr Smith in connection with a News Corp briefing memo for Mr Hunt on the BSkyB issues. Mr Smith answered: ‘Jeremy’s response to this – “persuasive”.’ After BBC boss Mr Thompson used a speech to the Edinburgh Television Festival to raise concerns about Sky’s dominance, Mr Hunt sent Mr Michel a message saying: ‘Because he trains his guns on you, he failed to make his case to me.’

When he assumed responsibility for determining the bid in a ‘quasi-judicial’ fashion, Mr Hunt told Mr Michel: ‘All contact with me now needs to be through official channels until decision made.’

But the pair did exchange some text messages after this.

After the Culture Secretary appeared in the House of Commons, and the French-born Mr Michel texted to congratulate him, Mr Hunt replied: ‘Merci! Large drink tonight.’

When the News Corp lobbyist told Mr Hunt he had been ‘very good’ on Andrew Marr’s BBC programme, to which he replied again: ‘Merci.’

In another text, the Culture Secretary said: ‘Merci hopefully when consultation over we can have a coffee like the old days.’

In the key memo to the Prime Minister, dated November 19, 2010, Mr Hunt, who had spoken to James Murdoch on the telephone a few days earlier, wrote: ‘James Murdoch is pretty furious at Vince’s referral to Ofcom. He does not think he will get a fair hearing from Ofcom.’

He did add the caveat that it would be ‘totally wrong’ for the Government to get involved in a competition issue, which should be decided at arms length.

But he said: ‘However, I do think you, I, Vince and the DPM should meet to discuss the policy issues that are thrown up as a result.’ Government sources said the meeting never took place.

Mr Smith, giving evidence to the inquiry yesterday, was initially reluctant to concede that the Culture Secretary had backed the Murdoch bid from the outset.

Under lengthy questioning from Mr Jay, he eventually admitted, however, that Hunt’s ‘personal view’ was in fact favourable.

A Number 10 source said all the views expressed in the memo to Mr Cameron had already been put into the public domain by the Culture Secretary, including in newspaper interviews.

Gus O’Donnell advised that what personal views he had previously expressed about the Murdochs, privately or publicly, was not the key point. It was about how he would conduct himself in the future,’ the source said.

A source close to Mr Hunt insisted he had not wanted to take on responsibility for the bid. ‘Nobody did,’ the source said. ‘You were either going to end up with every newspaper organisation in the land or the Murdoch empire hating you.

‘What Jeremy did at every stage was to bring in independent regulators to ensure this process was fair. He was well aware that his opinions on the bid would make people think that he wasn’t handling it fairly.’

Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader said: ‘It is clear that Jeremy Hunt was not the impartial arbiter he was required to be, and he should already have resigned.’